As technological advances are made in communication equipment, and computers are more highly integrated into the telecommunication networks and systems, the ultimate goal of communication service providers: obtaining "real-time", "seamless" access to all parties, is becoming an ascertainable target. "Real-time" access includes the ability to contact a party instantaneously as opposed to paging the party or leaving a message. "Seamless" access includes the ability to reach a party regardless of the party's physical location, or the time of day. Thus, there are few moments when the party cannot be contacted. The task of maintaining seamless access with a moving party is difficult.
One solution presently in operation is the Personal Number Service ("PNS"), which is described in commonly owned U.S. application Ser. No. 07/936,384. PNS from BellSouth Wireless gives a subscriber the ability to be in contact with other callers regardless of the subscriber's location. PNS provides a single point of contact for each subscriber in the form of a personal number. Thus, the personal number is used to access the subscriber at various destination numbers. The personal number can be a special number dedicated to the personal number system or can be a mobile phone number which the system recognizes. Each subscriber provides the system with communication routing information in the form of one or more "destination lists" or "routing lists". Each routing list contains the various directory numbers where the subscriber can be contacted. The subscriber also has the flexibility to change the routing lists or alter the manner in which they are utilized. Methods to alter the use of the routing lists include enabling an "override" feature. The override feature allows the subscriber to disable the use of the routing list for a particular caller or all callers, and force the incoming call to be routed to a particular alternate number. Upon disabling the override feature, the system will resume the use of the routing lists. Another feature of the personal number communication system is to allow the subscriber to provide different routing lists for different days of the week or specific time slots within the day. Thus, one routing list may be used on weekdays from 9:00 AM to 6:00 PM, another routing list on weekdays after 6:00 PM, and a third routing list on weekends.
The general operation of the PNS call routing feature can be described in the following steps:
(1) When a call is placed to a subscriber's personal number, the telephone system will receive the call. PA0 (2) The telephone system will then identify the number that was called as belonging to a subscriber of the personal number communication system and will then determine the type of service to be provided. PA0 (3) Finally, if the call requires routing, a routing list will be retrieved and call attempts to the various destinations will be made until the subscriber is located; however, if the subscriber cannot be located, the incoming call will be routed to a default destination such as voice mail.
More specifically, when the telephone system detects that a call to a personal number has been initiated, PNS first determines if the personal number includes facsimile services. If so, the system will first determine whether or not the call attempt is a facsimile transmission. If the call is a facsimile transmission, then the system will store the facsimile data until the subscriber retrieves this information at a later time. If the call attempt is not a facsimile transmission, then the system will determine whether the call is an administration call. An administration call is initiated by the subscriber and allows the subscriber to modify his service options, retrieve any voice mail that might have previously been stored, or obtain prior facsimile transmissions. If the call is not an administration call, the system will then check to see if the incoming call is a priority call. For priority calls, the system indicates to the subscriber that the call being received is from a priority caller.
Finally, if the call requires a routing service, the PNS will identify the calling party and prepare an identification announcement for the subscriber. The identity of the calling party may be determined by performing a reverse white pages database lookup based on the phone number of the calling party or by prompting the calling party to provide identification by either making a voice announcement or by keypad entries. Next, the PNS provides the calling party with a personal greeting from the subscriber, or a standard greeting, which requests the calling party to hold while an attempt to place the call is made.
While the calling party is holding, the PNS continues by retrieving a routing list for the subscriber based on the time of day or day of the week or any other system established criteria. Next, the numbers in the selected routing list will be sequentially accessed until either the call has been successfully routed, rejected, or the list has been exhausted. The routing operation is performed by: placing the received call on hold; selecting a first directory number from the routing list; placing a second call to the selected number; and if it is accepted, connecting the two calls. If the number selected is a mobile phone number, the system will determine if the mobile phone is powered on prior to redirecting the call. This determination is made by verifying whether an autonomous registration for that mobile number has been recently received. The autonomous registration is an indication that the mobile is on and is within the service provider area. Once the first destination has been selected (and the phone is powered on in the case of a mobile number), the system places lo a call to that number.
When the call is answered, an announcement identifying the caller is made to the answering party. In addition, the answering party is prompted to provide disposition information to identify if the call is formally accepted, formally rejected or passively rejected. A formal acceptance occurs when the call is answered and the answering party provides an indication that the call is accepted. This indication may take the form of pressing a key on the phone to transmit a particular DTMF signal or simply maintaining the phone in an "off-hook" state for a specific period of time. A formal rejection occurs when the call is answered and the answering party decides not to accept the call. Similar to a formal acceptance, a formal rejection can include pressing a key to transmit a DTMF signal. In addition, the party can return the receiver to an "on-hook" state within a specific period of time. A call is considered to be successfully routed if a formal acceptance or formal rejection is received. An unsuccessful or failed routing occurs when the call does not result in a formal acceptance or formal rejection. A failed routing, also termed an informal rejection, can take the form of (a) a failure of a call to be answered; (b) the detection of a busy signal; (c) or the answering of the call by an answering machine. Thus, an informal rejection occurs when the call is unsuccessfully routed to the destination.
If the call is formally accepted, the system routes the communication to the destination. If the call is formally rejected, the system routes the communication to a default destination which can be specified by the subscriber. If the call is informally rejected, the system then attempts to route the call to the next destination in the routing list and again requests communication disposition information. The system continues to request communication disposition information from each sequential destination in the routing list until the communication is formally accepted, formally rejected or until the last destination on the routing list is reached. Once the destinations on the routing list have been exhausted, the communication is routed to a last or a default destination. PNS thus includes features similar to call routing, call forwarding, call screening, priority call routing, voice messaging and fax service on a network-based system.
Although the PNS has made substantial advances towards providing seamless access to a subscriber, there is a desire for additional features that can operate to minimize the amount of time required to provide access to a subscriber. For subscribers that utilize routing lists with several destination numbers, the calling party must wait while the subscriber is located. The present invention minimizes this time by determining which destinations have the highest probability of yielding successful results. By creating and retaining this type of information, calls could be routed to the destinations in the routing list based on the probability of successfully completing the call. On the average, this ability would help to reduce the amount of time that a calling party would have to wait in order to contact the subscriber.
Therefore, there is a need in the art for a method that would improve the response time in delivering communications to a called party.
Further, there is a need in the art for a method to route calls in a routing list based system, that given a particular routing list, destinations from within that list can be selected based on the probability of completing the call to that destination.
Furthermore, there is a need in the art for a method to update dynamically the order that a list of numbers is called in order to route calls to a subscriber within the personal number communication system.